Sarah (5 page)

The Jackalope has the most beatific smile on its face, and clouded eyes the color of wasabi. Its lush silver-brown fur looks so forgiving and noble, every lizard in the room cannot help but reach out to it sumptuously.

But what everyone is astounded by, including the cast and crew from the national TV news show that filmed here and is well documented by framed autographed photos which the Pinkerton also must guard, are the antlers. Apparently they keep growing. I’ve heard it said the roof has had to be raised five times just to accommodate the miracle. I can even make out the phosphorescent buds of new antler.

The smoky sanctified air combines with various evaporated alcohols laced with moonshine’s embalming fluids and causes actual storm clouds to form around the uppermost antlers. So as Pooh and I are glugging our mouths like fish do, it suddenly starts to rain pure tiger’s sweat moonshine down from one of the antler clouds, onto our tongues.

‘Ah, yum yum.’ Pooh licks her lips and opens her mouth wider to catch as much of the consecrated whiskey rainfall. What drips into my mouth burns like lye so I spit it out, as respectfully as I can.

‘I feel the Jackalope’s power. Don’t you, She-Ra?’ Pooh moans.

I nod my head in slow motion. ‘I do indeed, Pooh.’ I realize my arms are stretched upward just like Pooh’s and just like every other lizard’s.

What I feel is a slow hard wave of silky insinuating electrical currents that makes every other lizard and me wave like at a revivalist meeting.

Some weep, some whimper. Everyone, even the male lizards, toss the last pair of underwear they wore on a trick into the offering barrel. I’ve heard it said that those undergarments make for a brisk mail-order business and finance the antler roof raisings.

Soon a quiet Chinese gong sounds and the Pinkerton without moving a muscle says, ‘Okay, ladies and gentlemen, you have five more minutes, then you need to take it into the bar. Thank you.’

Everyone closes their eyes tight and makes their prayer. I reach up under my blouse and grab my raccoon penis bone and clutch it tight. I chant to myself, ‘Please, oh divine Jackalope, I want to be a real lizard. I want to
earn
a huge bone.’ I open my eyes and stare up into its dead murky eyes. ‘Make me a better lizard than Sarah,’ I say with a force that invigorates and frightens me at the same time.

The gong sounds again gently and the Pinkerton clears his throat and the lizards start to progress toward the bar to toast their newfound libidinous powers.

Some old-timers put ‘Jake Leg Blues’ by Daddy Stovepipe and Mississippi Sarah on the jukebox to make fun of some of the lizards that are temporarily paralyzed by the force of the Jackalope and now are walking like they drank bad moonshine.

All the pimps who are still able to see straight stumble over to their lizards to peruse their new improved commodities. I glimpse my every other Thursday 7 p.m. who drove me over here, slumped down in a corner with drool hanging down like an icicle.

‘Le Loup!’ Pooh shouts and she is engulfed into the open flaps of Le Loup’s long leather coat like a little rodent snatched up by a bat. He lifts her small body and tosses her into the air before setting her back down.

‘It was fantastic!’ She claps her hands.

Le Loup only nods. Pooh motions me forward. I walk toward them, feeling my new fresh abilities surging through me.

‘Oh, I’m gonna not disappoint you no more. I swear on it. I’m changed, changed, changed. It’s done!’ Pooh has tears in her eyes. ‘No more dates gonna complain about me ever again.’

I move next to her. ‘Oh, Le Loup, this is She-Ra. She-Ra, Le Loup.’ She gently touches her bruised eye.

I look up into the fuzziest face I have every seen. Long black bushy sideburns take up most of his face. His eyes peering over his facial shrubbery are so small and dark I think they must just be the raisin eyes stolen off a gingerbread man’s face.

He nods and runs his hand through his slicked-back oiled hair then takes my hand in his. ‘Pleased to meet you, Miss She-Ra.’ He bends down and kisses my hand. His hand feels damp and smooth like the exposed under-part on a just-fixed dog. He gives me a big smile with no teeth. As we walk through the bar, I spy him taking me in. He gives me a gentlemanly wag of his head in approval and I feel myself flush with pleasure.

‘Aw, and you blush too,’ he says and squats down so his head is at my chest.

‘I blush too!’ Pooh says eagerly. ‘I mean, if I’m embarrassed I will, I guess nothing’s done been doing me that for some time, but I think—’

‘Shhh!’ Le Loup makes us both jump. ‘Sorry, honey, did I scare you?’ he says and caresses my hand. ‘Just your friend Pooh there has never learned when to quiet down.’

‘Sorry, I’m sorry,’ Pooh whispers. ‘Sorry…’

Le Loup never takes his gaze away from me.

‘So pretty,’ he says and I feel myself flush again. ‘I love your Goldilocks curls… Who you here with, honey?’

I point to every other Thursday 7 p.m. folded over in the corner.

‘Oh, well, he looks like he’s hangin’ in there like a hair on biscuit.’ He laughs, Pooh laughs, I laugh.

‘He ya daddy?’ he says through his smile.

I shake my head.

‘You work for him?’

I shake my head. He smiles wider.

‘Who you work for?’ he says into my neck. His breath smells like licorice.

I shrug.

‘Precious little princess you are…’ He laughs, Pooh laughs, I laugh. I notice the seams on the shoulders of his leather are coming apart.

‘Look at me playing twenty questions with you and you must be starving, waiting on that line hours!’ He lets go of my hand and stands.

Pooh rubs her stomach. ‘I sure would love a hillbilly pop and a big chicken-fried steak because I am—’

Le Loup shoots her a fast look. He reaches down his hand for my hand and I take it. I let him escort me into the dining room.

‘Starving…’ Pooh mutters behind us.

‘Aren’t you precious,’ Le Loup says after I carefully cut the burnt black gristle off the half of chicken-fried steak I’m splitting with Pooh.

I want to tell them about Doves Diner and Bolly and the big French white puffy chef’s hat he earned. I want to take out my bone, dangle it before their eyes and tell them I’m going to earn the grandest one ever. But I say nothing.

Le Loup tosses boiled peanuts into the air and I swear I can see his tongue unfurl like an iguana’s and pluck them out of midair.

‘Want some West Virginia spring water?’ Pooh starts to pour me some of the clear liquid out of a jam-jelly glass.

‘Don’t you get her on that rotgut!’ Le Loup swipes at her hand.

‘Sorry…’ Pooh takes a big swig and coughs.

‘So, as I was saying…’ His hand strokes my hair and I can’t help but lean into his touch. ‘If you come work for me’—his finger grazes the tip of my ear, raising the hairs on the back of my neck—‘you’ll have a million Barbie dolls. You like Barbie? How many Barbies have I got you, Pooh?’

‘A lot,’ Pooh says and spits after making sure Le Loup isn’t looking at her.

‘I’d get you all the outfits. Just got Pooh the loveliest fur coat made just for Barbie.’

Pooh pushes her eyes farther back into her head.

I nod.

‘You’ll want for nothing ever.’ His fingers wiggle under my chin tickling me so I involuntarily jerk my chin to my chest catching his hand there. He leaves it. Then slides it inside my blouse and over my heart.

‘I’m the best daddy you’ll ever have,’ he says in a low voice that’s half whisper, half growl.

I look down to watch his hand rising and falling with my breath. I close my eyes. The warmth of his hand penetrates me. Le Loup lets out a laugh and presses harder on my heart.

I snap my eyes open to see his face breaking into an immense smile, this time with teeth.

Boxcutter teeth with gold trim impressed with Norse warrior designs.

‘Welcome aboard!’ He laughs.

We pile into Le Loup’s purple Trans Am. Pooh climbs over me to sit next to Le Loup. We speed through winding backroads that make the tires screech and produce thick billows of red dust. I take little sips of the clear liquid in Pooh’s jam-jelly jar and it burns my throat like a thousand fire-ant bites. My eyes get too heavy to keep open as the orange reflector lights and the yellow eyes of deer and mountain cougar blaze by us. I start to lean on Pooh, my head falling on her shoulder. With a firm shove, she pushes me, redirecting me to sleep against the door.

‘It’s gonna rain down hard…’ Pooh says.

I slowly let my eyes focus on the substantial stone masonry of the Vatican.

‘You best get up, ’cause Le Loup just laid a black snake belly-up on the freeway divider.’

Pope John Paul II’s face is in the middle of the Vatican, set agreeably upon a bed of curlicue fuchsia hearts.

‘Sky sure looks bluer than end-of-the-month balls though,’ Pooh says.

When I rock my head back and forth, Pope John Paul II winks at me and seems to pucker out little kissies.

‘A black snake, belly-up, is sure to make it wet as a lizard’s poing after pay day,’ Pooh says.

I try respectfully to blow a kiss back to Pope John Paul II, but my mouth only flaps.

‘You can’t hold your liquor.’ Pooh’s face appears over me, blocking out Pope John Paul II and the Vatican. I try to look past her.

‘You heaved up pretty good.’ Pooh smiles, then suddenly barks a loud laugh showing a mouth full of fuzzy gray teeth. Her bruised face appears to liquefy and undulate like goulash. ‘How you managed to splatter all over a car interior and not catch a speck on your own self must be an act of the Lord.’ She barks again. ‘Not a speck … but your breath…’ She waves her hand in front of her face. ‘Panther’s breath!’ Pooh motions to the poster on the ceiling above us. ‘Le Loup even laid you out under His Holiness. You was gonna have your baptism, but he got a whiff…’ Pooh waves her hands again and makes a sourball face. ‘Le Loup is a devout Catholic, you know. He anoints all his girls here. He would’ve put out the consecrated satin zebra sheets, but I said you might blow again, so he laid out a garbage bag under you instead.’ Pooh bays again.

I roll my head to the side and have a hard time noticing when it stops.

‘I doubt he’ll put you out without getting you first.’ Pooh climbs off me. I slowly look around the room. Everything is furry.

‘But ’cause of the snake, it is gonna storm, and when it storms, all them truckers stuck in their cabs … we’re gonna be busy!’

Everything in the small room is covered in fur. Thick, matted brown bear fur. The couch, the coffee table, there’s even fur wainscoting.

‘I imagine he wants to test the Jackalope in us, and that’s why he put out the black snake…’

She sits on the fur couch and grabs a small jam-jelly jar off the fur coffee table. She blows across the clear liquid in the glass but no steam puffs, then she gulps it all down in three quick swallows. ‘It’s gonna pour,’ she says, leaning over and moving aside the window shade. ‘Gotta fortify.’

I nod.

‘You’ll learn how. You want some breakfast?’ Before I can answer, she’s pulling my arm, making me sit up. She suddenly pushes back my chin so I’m being winked at by Pope John Paul II again. ‘He didn’t even bite ya!’ She gives my chin a subtle shove back down. ‘Well, he will.’ She grins again. ‘Faster than a fart in a whirlwind, he’ll take you.’

I’m not sure how to respond to the half-conscious acrid friendliness in her eyes, so I retch.

‘Ewww, God!’ She hops off the bed. ‘You trash Le Loup’s car, now you want to do me again? And don’t think he won’t make you pay for that, precious!’

‘Sorry,’ I say and try to find her eyes under the swelling.

She shakes her head and grabs her glass and shakes out a drop into her mouth.

‘I’m supposed to get you breakfast. So let’s go.’

I pull myself off the bed and peel away the garbage bag stuck to my legs.

‘I have to…’

‘One is the closet the other is the crapper. I’ll let you be adventurous.’

I can’t see my feet in the deep fur as I walk over to the two doors. I open one and its insides are pitch black and filled with cricket noises. I slam that one shut and open the other.

It smells like an elephant, so I wade through the thicker fur till I find a wooden slat commode next to a cracked full-length mirror.

I stare at myself in the mirror. My curls are a little fuzzy, but that is the appropriate outcome for not taking Sundae’s advice to apply an overlay of prime coat VO5. Pooh is right, though; no vomit got me. And aside from my plaid skirt and cotton blouse being a little wrinkled and my kneesocks rolled down, I am disappointed to see I look almost the same as I did when I left The Doves.

Pooh grabs my arm as I come out of the bathroom. ‘I gotta get you fed, so let’s go.’ She pulls me out of the converted barn, slamming and locking up the wide wood barn doors behind us.

‘Ugh, never get used to the stink of swamp lantern roses!’ Pooh holds her nose and points to the yellow flowers blooming out of the skunk cabbages lining the marsh like rows of hepatitis eyeballs.

We walk past trailers rusted in not unpleasant mauve and copper shades and broken-down tin shacks with red velvet curtains till we get to the truck lot. Eighteen-wheelers are precariously balanced on hugely broken-up disjointed tar slabs that surround, like petals on a daisy, a dilapidated dinner truck stop. On its summit is a magenta neon sign of three crutches joined up like the musketeers’ swords.

‘Three Crutches,’ Pooh says. ‘Founded by three beat-up lot lizards.’ She suddenly presses her hand under my eyes. ‘You ain’t got the crutches’ stigmata yet?’

I move my face away and then it hits me. Tears well up into my eyes.

‘Ahh, there they are!’ Pooh laughs.

I squat down on the ground and hold my eyes burning so intensely I can’t open them to see. ‘I can’t see, Pooh!’

Pooh laughs.

‘My eyes, Pooh, my eyes!’ I rub them violently trying to get rid of the fierce throbbing.

She laughs again, grabs under my arms, and drags me up. ‘Let’s go, Shirley Temple. I got no time to play. I’m supposed to feed you.’

‘I can’t see!’ I cry as I stumble. ‘I’m blind, Pooh, please!’